Speed and more speed: Reporter gets F-16 thrill ride

U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds Capt. Michael Fisher took reporter Frank Fernandez for a ride Thursday on his F-16 with a takeoff that was more like a missile launch.

FRANK FERNANDEZSTAFF WRITER

U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds Capt. Michael “Drago” Fisher enjoys flying his F-16 upside down. No doubt about that. Just ask my stomach. “I like flying upside down,” Fisher's voice crackled over the radio as his F-16 streaked through the sky near Palatka after some upside down aerial derring-do. His willing and nervous passenger — me — listened in the back seat of his roaring fighter jet. “Some day I won't be able to, so I like to fly upside down every chance I get.” He also enjoys rolls, knife edges, loops and inverted flat passes, the last of which is upside-down intensive. In short, he loves everything having to do with being a pilot for the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. Fisher took this reporter for a thrilling ride aboard his F-16 on Thursday to showcase some of the maneuvers the Thunderbirds will wow the crowds with on Saturday and Sunday during the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Wings and Waves Air Show above the sands of Daytona Beach. The takeoff was more like a missile launch with myself as part of the payload. During the flight, the sky, sun, Earth, houses, roads, miniscule cars, tiny boats and vast forests all spun around me as if I was at the center of a vast and natural kaleidoscope. We hit speeds at times of 540 mph. At one point as we streaked through the sky upside down, my helmet pushed against the top of the canopy as I peered out at the land far below me. The F-16 left a trail of smoke, and Fisher would loop back to roar through his own smoke trail. We began the flight in the morning with introductions to the ground crew. Then we climbed aboard the jet. All around me were dials and switches and levers. The throttle on the left had basically three settings: fast, faster and fastest, (the pre-flight doctor told me this). The joy stick on the right steered the jet. Try not to touch either of those, I was told. A switch on the left “armed” the rockets under my seat. Fisher told me before the flight to “arm” my seat. Unlike the bucket seat in my car, this seat could blast me out of trouble. In front of me between my legs was a yellow ejection handle. Fisher told me in the unlikely event that I needed to eject, just pull that handle to parachute to safety. The helmet muffled the roar of the jet fighter's mighty engine. Fisher's voice sounded far away over the radio but he was right in front of me. The 32-year-old Fisher, from Washington state, joined the Air Force in 2002 and has flown more than 1,400 hours with the Air Force and more than 430 combat hours in Iraq. Fisher is the narrator for the Thunderbirds show. He said he enjoys spreading the word about career and educational opportunities in the Air Force, which, besides being a pilot, offers many different career paths: logistics, finance, aviation maintenance, computer support, just to name some. Most of those jobs are represented on the Thunderbirds' team, Fisher said. The team also includes some Embry-Riddle graduates, like Maj. J.R. Williams, a pilot who graduated from the school's Prescott, Ariz., campus. I came in contact with a number of those team members when I reported to a hangar at the rear of Daytona Beach International Airport. First I met with U.S. Air Force Technical Sgt. Craig Hall. He got me suited up in gear, including an oxygen mask, a red, white and blue helmet and a G-suit. Maj. Michael Carletti, the flight surgeon for the team, told me I would be subjected to gravitational forces as much as nine times my body weight, which in my case at 175 pounds would be 1,575 pounds. That would make moving difficult and could cause my blood to drain from my head, leading to blackout, so he gave me some advice: “Squeeze butt, squeeze butt, squeeze butt.” Doing that along with curling my toes would tense up muscles and help keep the blood from leaving my head. He also had advice if I became airsick: “Drop mask, drop mask, drop mask.” (Take off my oxygen mask and grab an air sickness bag strapped to my leg.) Next I met with Fisher, who is 6 feet 3 inches tall and goes by the call sign Drago, after the fictional Soviet boxer in the Rocky movies. Fisher and I got in a van and made the short drive to F-16 Thunderbird No. 8. To my astonishment, the Thunderbirds had even put my name in blue letters on the canopy. I climbed up into the plane and settled into the back seat and another crew member helped strap me into the ejection seat and parachute. We taxied to the runway. The departure was nothing like an airline takeoff. Fisher turned up the throttle on the fighter jet and left the ground in seconds. When the F-16 was only about 30 feet off the ground, Fisher pointed the plane straight up. The G's kicked in along with the G-suit and for a few seconds I felt an elephant sitting on my chest. It was hard to turn around or even look back. The plane shot into the sky and in a snap of the fingers was soaring at 11,000 feet. The sky seemed to turn as Fisher put the plane on its back and then rolled it over on its belly. The airport and Daytona International Speedway were far below. We headed for a military bombing range near the center of the state. It didn't take long to get there. A few snaps of the fingers. We soared over the St. Johns River, a boat below looking like the size of a mullet. Other earthbound objects sparkled like pieces of glass in the sun. Then we pulled some G's and as the gravitational forces increased the G-suit filled with air. It reminded me of a blood-pressure cuff, only one that fills instantly and is very large. He put the plane on its side, a knife edge, and skimmed across the sky. He would check with me after every maneuver to see how I was doing. I only felt queasy once toward the end, my nerves calmed the longer we flew. Fisher also did the inverted flat pass: Basically you start upside down, do a roll and end up upside down. “I like flying upside down,” he said again. Fisher made a convert out of me: Flying upside down certainly has its merits.

Editor's note: Capt. Michael Fisher deployed twice to Iraq and was not deployed to Afghanistan, as was originally reported.